


Urban Legends

by SectoBoss



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: 1920s, Alternate Universe - 1920s, Alternate Universe - Prohibition Era, Dieselpunk, Gen, Jazz - Freeform, Lovecraftian, More characters will be tagged as they're added in, Prohibition, Speakeasies, mafia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-17
Updated: 2015-09-17
Packaged: 2018-04-21 06:18:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4818299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SectoBoss/pseuds/SectoBoss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>New York City, 1927. It's the height of the Jazz Age and the 20s have never roared louder - not that you'd know in the grimy neighbourhood of Gravity Falls. It's a world of skyscrapers and zeppelins in the air, gangsters and speakeasies on the streets, and nameless horrors and foul cults in the sewers below. And stuck in the middle of it all, two twins trying to make ends meet without getting cuffs on their wrists or a bullet in their back. But between Lovecraftian horrors, vicious mob bosses and evil billionaires, that's going to be much easier said than done.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Urban Legends

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Seems like everyone and their dog’s getting in on the 1920s AU craze at the moment, so this is my attempt to jump on that bandwagon. This is the first of what will hopefully be a one or two short stories set in my own imagining of a 20s AU, with a tiny bit of dieselpunk and Lovecraft thrown in for flavour.  
> This work was heavily inspired by the art of Tybay on DeviantArt, which everyone should totally check out – it’s awesome, and their own 20s AU is a very intriguing one!  
> And stop the presses: Haiz over on Tumblr has just drawn some phenomenal art of Mabel in her jazz getup from this chapter! [Go check it out!](http://unicorngender.tumblr.com/post/129293661319/20s-au-mabel-pines-and-now-youre-probably-asking)

_Most people probably don’t remember the summer of 1924. For most people, the world went on pretty much as it had done for seven years since the Great War ended. President Coolidge had been sworn back into office and was presumably celebrating by doing nothing as usual. They laid the foundations for the Northwest Tower – formerly the Chrysler Building – in New York, which two years later would become the tallest building in the world. I seem to remember the Senators beat the Giants, which I imagine is a sentence that sounds a lot more interesting if you’ve never heard of baseball. But beyond that – nothing.  
_

_For my sister and I, the summer of 1924 changed our lives beyond recognition.  
_

_Having lived for twelve years in the sleepy backwater town of Piedmont, NY – the poor cousin to the vastly more famous Piedmont over on the West Coast – we suddenly found ourselves in the hustle and bustle of New York City, orphans, irrevocably tied up in the illegal liquor trade, and all within the space of a month.  
_

_My sister and I were never meant to stay with our great-uncle Stan (or ‘Grunkle Stan’, as we affectionately named him within ten minutes of our introduction) for more than a few weeks. Our father’s business dealings were taking him to England for a month and he decided to celebrate his newfound wealth by booking two first-class zeppelin tickets out of New York, one for him and one for his wife of fourteen years. Not four tickets, mind you – he wasn’t made of money – so it was decided to leave Mabel and I with a family member while they were away. Grunkle Stan already lived in New York City, in a run-down Brooklyn neighbourhood called Gravity Falls, so he was the obvious choice.  
_

_The airship my parents took was the_ Königsberg _. After all, if you were going to travel by air, you took a German vessel. As they liked to boast back then, they’d never lost a single craft.  
_

_I still remember that day down at the Docklands as we waved our parents off. They still allowed airships to moor within the city limits in those days – the Bismarck Disaster was still over a decade in the future, don’t forget – although they at least had the good sense to moor them out over the river, atop massive aerospikes on the end of long concrete piers which you can still see today.  
_

_One moment we were saying our goodbyes in the tangled shadow of the aerospike’s girders, and the next our parents were being whisked away in the elevator that ran up the centre of the tower and into the gondola of the airship above. I still recall the roar as the airship’s engines span up to full power and blasted streams of hot, gritty air over the pier below. I had to clutch my cap to my head to stop it from blowing off. Stan wasn’t so quick and the handkerchief he had been waving was torn from his grasp and sent tumbling up into the air, followed by a stream of carefully neutered curses. A loud metallic thunk as the magnetic mooring clamps released and the_ Königsberg _peeled away from its aerospike, up and around, rising into the Manhattan noon and pointing its nose gracefully eastwards. Within minutes it was just a speck in the distance, its pearly envelope easily mistaken for a distant cloud if you didn’t know what to look out for.  
_

_Two days later, Mabel and I snuck downstairs one night to find our Great-Uncle Stan ran a speakeasy out of his basement.  
_

_And the day after that, as Stan paced up and down in front of our accusing stares and tried to explain to us that just because he broke the law didn’t mean he was a bad person, the_ Königsberg _was reported lost over the Atlantic with all hands. In a stroke, a month of summer became a lifetime.  
_

_But amazing as it seems, the miserable summer of 1924 was not the most important time of my youth. For that, we must travel three years ahead, to the blistering heat of 1927…  
_

_Excerpt from_ Chasing Ghosts _, the autobiography of Dipper Pines (unpublished manuscript)_

 

* * *

 

_The Mystery Parlour_

_Gravity Falls neighbourhood, New York City_

_May, 1927_

 

“Aaand… _checkmate!_ ”

“ _What?_ ”

Dipper spluttered in confusion as he looked at the chessboard set up on a small table between their beds. His king had been knocked clean off the board by Mabel’s enthusiastic replacement of it with one of her knights and it toppled to the flood with a wooden rattle.

“You heard me, broseph!” Mabel crowed, punching the air with both fists and flashing him a triumphant beam. Her gold front teeth gleamed in the evening light that filtered through their room’s one window. “Your reign is at an end! The armies of righteousness have finally vanquished the evil Black King!”

Dipper pinched the bridge of his nose in exasperation. “First of all, Mabel, would you _please_ stop calling me broseph?”

“Sure thing, dipping sauce,” Mabel shot back, quick-as-you-like, her grin widening.

Dipper pretended he hadn’t heard that. “Secondly,” he continued with a grimace, “that’s an illegal move. A knight can’t just jump across half the board like that!”

Mabel arched an eyebrow at him. “A horse can’t, sure. But a unicorn can.”

Dipper finally understood why Mabel’s two white knights had small tubes of cigarette paper pasted to their foreheads. He’d thought she’d just stuck them on there because she was bored. He sighed in exasperation.

“Mabel, you can’t just make up new pieces. That’s silly.”

“A castle moving around’s pretty silly too,” Mabel retorted, jabbing her finger at one of Dipper’s rooks. Privately, Dipper was forced to admit she might have a point there. “I think you’re just getting in a lather because I’ve finally beaten you at this game,” she teased. She put her hands behind her head and lay back on her bed, signalling to Dipper that any debate about the validity of unicorns in chess was quite closed.

“Oh, says you,” Dipper shot back with a defeated smile. Fifteen years of sibling interactions meant Mabel knew all the tricks of getting under his skin. He bent to retrieve the king Mabel had sent flying, nearly knocking his head on the table as he straightened back up.

“Another game?” he asked, setting the pieces back up.

Mabel yawned. “No thanks. Chess is boring.”

“You’re only saying that because you’re afraid of losing,” Dipper said. Mabel looked at him coolly, propping herself up on one elbow. “Besides,” he continued, “you think everything is boring.”

“No, brother, I think everything _you_ dois boring. There’s a world of difference.” She put on an exaggerated, scratchy, puberty-ravaged voice. “ _Hullo! My name’s Dipper Pines and I’m the biggest goof in Christendom! I write fake stories for a rag of a newspaper! I play games on a table because I’m not strong enough to hold a baseball bat! Oh no, got to dash, I’m late for my 9 o’clock necking of a pillow with Wendy Corduroy’s face drawn on it!_ ”

Dipper seethed in indignation. “You…” An eye for an eye, he decided. “ _And I’m Dipper’s sister Mabel! I think I’m the bee’s eyebrows, the elephant’s meow, that I’m_ so _hip to the jive and_ such _a live wire that I can go around saying things that I don’t even know what they mean! I once glued a telephone to my ear and had to go to the hospital! I have done nothing productive all day and will continue to do so all night! Oh, and have you met my new boyfriend – sorry,_ sheik _– no, don’t bother asking what his name is, I don’t know either, we only met two minutes ago!”  
_

They both glared daggers across the room at each other for a good ten seconds, neither of them even blinking, before their snarls cracked in unison and they fell about laughing.

“I don’t really sound like that, do I?” Dipper gasped, wiping his eyes and grinning.

“Better believe it, bro,” Mabel chortled. “Only thing I made up was the bit about the pillow.” She leaned forward and whispered conspiratorially. “I know it’s really a cushion.”

“Dry up, would you?” Dipper demanded. Mabel was cutting just a little too close to the bone with this one.

Mabel offered him a knowing grin and lay back down again, kicking her legs idly in the air. “Not difficult in this heat,” she sighed. “Are you sure the window’s open?”

New York had been sweating under a minor heatwave last two days, even as rains pounded the Midwest and the Mississippi burst its banks to drown half of Arkansas, Mississippi and Louisiana. Now, on this Sunday evening, the weather was finally starting to cool and Dipper had flung their window wide open to try and let some air in. The sounds of the city – the dull roar of traffic, the rattle and clang of trams, the distant drone of mooring airships, the shouts and footfalls of five million people – drifted in with the breeze.

Mabel groaned and suddenly thrashed around on her bed in a good impression of a beached fish. “It’s too damn _hot_ ,” she suddenly cried, and sprang to her feet.

“You sound like Stan when he thinks we’re not around,” Dipper smiled. “I think the correct phrase is too _darn_ hot. And besides, you’re doing yourself no favours with that sweater.”

Mabel ignored him. The sweaters stayed, no matter how bad the heat got. Mabel was fully prepared for a rescue team to find a charred skeleton still sporting a swanky sweater if it came to it. Besides, her current one – an olive green number festooned with useful little pockets and pouches that she’d finished that morning – still needed breaking in, heat or none.

She trotted over to the far end of their room, where a full-length mirror that she and Soos had ‘salvaged’ from behind a pawn shop a year ago was propped up against the wall. Meanwhile, Dipper reached over to the end of his mattress, which like the rest of his half of the room was a mess of dirty clothes, books, old food wrappers and typewritten reports. Her twin brother lived like a pig, she thought – in fact, if dear Waddles was anything to go by, pigs would look down on him. He fished out an old newspaper from under what she _really_ hoped wasn’t a grimy t-shirt and began to leaf idly through it. Mabel recognised it as a copy of the _Gravity Falls Gossiper_. Dipper was an intern there when he wasn’t downstairs bartending in the speakeasy Grunkle Stan had built into his basement.

“Why are you reading that, bro?” she asked confusedly as she inspected herself in the mirror. “I thought you already practically wrote everything in there anyway.”

Dipper just grunted, not looking up. “Just want to remind myself that old Toby has the journalistic talent of a flea.”

Mabel almost immediately stopped listening. Dipper had a laundry list of complaints about his boss, a man with the singular name of Toby Determined. He didn’t understand what was a good story was, he didn’t pay Dipper enough, he made Dipper write every story and took all the credit, he tap danced in his office… the list went on. Mabel could care less – at least her brother had managed to land a day job. She should be so lucky.

Mabel turned back to the mirror, twisting her head this way and that, bunching up her long hair in her hands and occasionally miming snipping it off at the back of her neck. Dipper glanced up from the paper at this little performance and rolled his eyes. Mabel had been debating whether or not to cut her waist-length hair for six months now. On the one hand, fashion demanded a bob cut like Clara Bow or Louise Brooks or any other starlet from Hollywood to Broadway. But on the other, Mabel’s long hair was the product of years of care and she was secretly reluctant to get rid of it. She spent a few more minutes humming and hahing at her reflection as Dipper stared in disbelief at an article about the New York Yankees that Toby had completely rewritten behind his back to confidently declare batter Babe Ruth way past his prime and unlikely to stage any form of comeback.

“Why don’t you get a ponytail?” he asked at last, putting the paper down on his lap. “Sounds to me like the best of both worlds.”

Mabel scoffed. “A ponytail? Brother, the day any woman looks to you for fashion advice will be a sad one indeed.”

Dipper frowned, nonplussed. “Wendy has a ponytail, and I think it rather suits her…” he protested.

Mabel moved slightly so she could grin at him in the mirror. “Dipper, Wendy could turn up in a barrel and a _beard_ and you’d still find her fetching.” Dipper screwed up his face as he tried to remove that mental image. “No,” Mabel continued, “a ponytail may suit Wendy but it wouldn’t suit me.” She put a finger to her chin in thought. “Perhaps I should ask Norman?”

Dipper nearly choked. “Norman? That creep? You’re not serious?” he cried.

Now it was Mabel’s turn to roll her eyes. “I’m plenty serious. I’ll have you know he’s got quite an eye for fashion.”

“He’s just another drugstore cowboy,” Dipper replied. “I don’t trust the guy.”

“You’ve only met him once!”

“And I think he’s a heel.”

“Oh, ish kabibble!” Mabel said breezily. _I don’t care,_ in English. “You’re just too suspicious of everyone.”

“I am not!”

“Yes you are!”

“Name one time when my suspicions weren’t validated!”

“How about that time you got it into your head that Mermando was going to kidnap me back to Spain!? He was just a friendly airman staying here while his airship was berthed and you got Wendy to chase him off with an axe!”

Dipper paused. She had him there. “…Alright, name two!”

Mabel gave him that tight-lipped, irritated pout that she was an expert at. She was about to launch into a small tirade about how Dipper really needed to stop interfering in her life when a shout from below derailed her train of thought.

“Kids! We open in one hour! Get ready and make it snappy, we’ve got a lot of people to fleece tonight!”

Grunkle Stan there, calling up the stairs. “Pos-i-lute-ly!” she shouted back.

“That… that’s not even a word, Mabel!” Stan hollered back in confusion.

“Is now!”

Mabel marched over to her wardrobe and flung it open. Inside, a plethora of pearls, sequins and bright colours shone like a misplaced galaxy in the early evening light. Dipper squinted against the sudden glare.

“Time to get our glad rags on, broseph,” she grinned. “It’s showtime!”

 

* * *

 

_Two hours later, two floors down  
_

As the sun took a bow and sank below the jagged skyline of New York City, the Mystery Parlour opened its doors to the lucrative Sunday-night crowd. Seven years after the passing of Prohibition into law, it seemed like half of the neighbourhood of Gravity Falls had turned up at the ramshackle building’s well-heeled basement speakeasy to thumb their noses at the 18th Amendment.

On stage, Stan Pines straightened the lapels of his suit and bellowed out into the thronging crowd.

“Ladies and gentlemen, step right up! See the rock that looks like a face! Is it a rock? Is it a face? Why, it’s a rock, like I just said! _Please stop asking!_ And over here, I’d like to draw your attention to this amazing specimen: a Jenny Haniver, ladies and gentlemen! Captured off the coast of Fiji and wonderfully preserved by a salty old sea-dog I bought this from down at the docks. Scientists deny the existence of these mysterious creatures, but I’d say the evidence rather speaks for itself, eh?”

There was a smattering of laughter that was muffled by the clink of glasses, hum of conversation and the cigarette smoke that had turned the air inside the room into a sort of stinging fog. Stan gave his audience a winning beam and turned with a flourish to the chestnut-haired girl stood on the stage behind him, who was clad in a sequinned red dress and a pearl-studded tiara. She clutched a trumpet in one hand and the stalk of a microphone in the other.

“But the star attraction, ladies and gentlemen, and the person I know you’re all here to see: the marvellous talent of my own lovely grand-niece, Mabel Pines! No mystery here folks, except how on earth she hasn’t been signed by Columbia Records yet!”

More laughter, and a few whistles and cheers. Mabel flashed the audience an ‘aw, shucks’ grin, the gold in her teeth glimmering. Stan tipped his fez jovially and hopped down off the stage, instructing Mabel to “take it away” as he started moving amongst tables and dancers, shaking hands and picking pockets in approximately equal measure. Mabel took a step forward, set the microphone down on its stand, raised her trumpet to her lips and started to play. She knew roughly what she wanted to play as she hit the opening notes of _My Angel Put the Devil in Me_. Start with a classic, wend her way through a few newer songs and one or two of her own devising, before ending on another classic – _Peeping Tom_ , perhaps, or _Looking Like This_. But really, she’d go where the music took her. Mabel’s philosophy was that if people wanted to hear the same old songs they’d listen to the radio or buy a gramophone. What these people wanted was music that never stopped, where one song could last for ten minutes or more and they all blended seamlessly into one another as she filled the room with sound. They wanted the Mabel Pines Experience, and she did not intend to disappoint.

Across the room, slouching behind the bar, Dipper pulled down his cap to hide his birthmark and poured out another pint of rye for a thirsty customer. He handed the man his drink and gave Mabel an encouraging thumbs-up which she probably couldn’t see with the footlights in her eyes. Soos, the Mystery Parlour’s heavyset Mexican handyman and bouncer, had rigged them up out of a few old car headlamps. With his typical knack for machines, Soos had somehow managed to make the clapped-out old bulbs burn as bright as searchlights. Dipper thought it was a wonder Mabel’s gold teeth didn’t blind someone every time she grinned on stage – and Mabel Pines grinned a lot, on stage and off it.

Next to Dipper his fellow bartender Wendy Corduroy, a woman three years his senior from the logging communities of northern Maine, clapped her hands appreciatively. “Wow, Mabel’s hitting on all sixes tonight,” she said to him over the hubbub of the speakeasy. “Attagirl, Mabel!” she shouted over the crowd, tapping her foot and bobbing her head to the music, completely ignoring the customers next to her who were forlornly trying to buy a drink.

Wendy was many things but a good bartender she was not. Dipper sidled up next to her and started to take the orders as she carried on dancing to herself behind him. He tried very hard not to notice how close he ended up standing to her swaying hips, and was supremely glad that the Mystery Parlour’s dim light hid his reddening cheeks.

A few feet away from the bar, Stan Pines was homing in on shmucks like a shark sensing blood in the water. He wove his way through the tables and chairs, taking care not to bark his shins in the semi-darkness, before plonking himself down in a free seat at a table populated by people he accurately pegged as rich university students. Four youthful faces, two male and two female, flushed with alcohol and the smug superiority of people born into money, turned to face him with various degrees of confusion.

He introduced himself, and got to work. Within seconds he had wormed his way into their conversation like an old friend, and inside of two minutes he was buying them drinks with their own money. One of the men, less drunk than the rest, tried to protest but Stan waved his objections aside. Then, when he deemed them just sozzled enough, he made his play.

“Now, this place,” he said, leaning in and lowering his voice, forcing the others to do the same, “this place always attracts the strange. That’s what it was, you know, before I turned it into this,” he added with a sweeping gesture that encompassed the bar, tables, dance floor and stage where Mabel had set her trumpet down for a second to belt out the lyrics to some jazz number. “A museum of the strange and unexplained. And there’s magic here, tonight.”

“Bushwa,” one of the girls trilled, “I don’t believe a word of it!”

“Oh, but it’s true,” Stan grinned. “My own nephew, Dipper, has The Sight.” The way he said it, you could hear the capitalisations.

The other four were just drunk enough that they didn’t notice what an odd name Dipper was. _Perfect_ , Stan thought as they roared with laughter. He grinned wider. “Oh, rot!” one of them cried. “Go spin your tales elsewhere, old timer!”

“Not a word of a lie,” Stan said. He reached into his jacket pocket, and produced a crisp, clean one-hundred dollar bill which he slapped onto the table. Benjamin Franklin gazed imperiously up at the four students. _Mabel really outdid herself on this one_ , Stan thought with a twinge of pride. _He almost looks like a man this time._ “Care to bet on it?” he asked.

The students looked hungrily down at the bill. No matter how much money people had, they always seemed to relish the chance to get more of it. “Alright,” one of them sneered, a bullish young man with close cropped hair. “We’ll meet your bet.”

“Whoa, wait just a-” one of the others started to protest, but she was drowned out by her friends.

“Very well,” Stan grinned, and with a flourish he pulled a deck of cards from his pocket, brand new and still in their paper wrapping. He tore the paper open and spilled the cards over the table. “Now I want one of you to pick a card. It’s a new deck, so no tampering on my end. And the moment you do, my nephew will come over here and tell you which one you picked, without me saying a word to him.”

No sooner were the words out of his mouth than the close-cropped one was holding up the three of diamonds in front of his face. “This card just cost you one hundred bucks, old timer,” he smirked.

“We’ll see,” Stan smiled, and waved Dipper over from the bar. “Hey, Dipper!” he yelled. “Come on over here!”

Behind the bar, Dipper – who had been keeping an eye on proceedings at that table for a few minutes now – nodded and quickly glanced down at a piece of paper pasted behind the bar:

… _Hey, Dipper! – diamonds … Come on over here! – 3 …  
_

He ducked out from behind the bar and pushed his way through the crowds, hoping Wendy could be trusted to hold it down in his absence. Stan very ostentatiously said nothing – going so far as to make the ‘my mouth is sealed’ gesture – as he came up to the table and waved his hands in the air a bit, trying to look suitably mystical.

“I sense…” Dipper muttered, “I sense…” There was a badly-concealed snigger which he ignored. “This one!” he cried, jabbing his finger down onto the three of diamonds.

Four mouths flopped open in stupid surprise as Dipper and Stan grinned hugely. “What did I tell you, ladies and gentlemen! What did I tell you? The lad’s got The Sight,” Stan crowed, quickly scooping up the money the four students had laid down as their side of the bet before they could have second thoughts. “Thank you, thank you! You’re always welcome back here at the Mystery Parlour!” He rose to his feet and the close-cropped student did likewise, an ugly look on his face and his fists clenched.

“Now look here, you two-timing old-” was all the young man managed to say before a heavy hand fell on his shoulder and he was spun around to face an enormous man with a friendly smile on his face and shoulders so broad it was a wonder he could fit into his shirt.

“Hey, dude,” Soos said cheerfully, tipping his flat cap with his free hand. “How about some fresh air?”

The young man started to protest as Soos dragged him away. The rest of his friends made to follow them, clearly embarrassed, shooting dirty looks at Stan that had all the effect of hurling snowballs at a battleship. Stan just favoured them with one last beam and sauntered off back to the bar to put the money in the cash register, whistling cheerfully to himself.

 

* * *

 

It was getting on for midnight when Wendy’s friends turned up. They clattered down the basement stairs like a herd of buffalo and spilled out into the speakeasy, quickly claiming a table and sending one of their number off to the bar to buy the first round. Behind the bar, Dipper’s heart sank as he clapped eyes on the lanky young man making his way towards him. He’d recognise that acne and slicked-back hair anywhere.

“Hey, doll,” Robbie Valentino drawled to Wendy as he propped up the bar. “How’re things?”

“Hey yourself,” Wendy grinned. “And just swell. What’ll it be?”

Robbie rattled off a list and Wendy started pouring. He reached for his wallet, but Wendy made a ‘stop’ gesture and looked around. “On the house,” she said quietly when she was confident Stan wasn’t in earshot. Robbie grinned. Next to her, Dipper swallowed a little nervously.

“Wendy, are you sure that’s a good idea?” he asked.

Robbie cast around at his eye-level in mock surprise before dropping his gaze to Dipper. He recoiled theatrically. “Holy hell!” he exclaimed. “There’s someone else behind the bar with you, Wendy! Some kind of tiny gnome-creature!”

Dipper glared at him. “I’m not tiny!” he protested. “I am a perfectly respectable height!”

Robbie snorted with laughter and even Wendy chuckled quietly. “Fantastic,” he said. “In that case, if you think you can see over the bar to serve me, two pints of rye beer.”

“Careful!” he added as Dipper stormed off. “Don’t strain those noodle arms on the beer taps!”

“Oh, lay off, Robbie,” Wendy chided playfully.

Robbie pointedly didn’t apologise, or even say anything, when Dipper came back with the drinks. Instead he just picked them up and headed off, throwing an invitation for Wendy to join the rest of them over his shoulder as he muscled back through the crowd.

Wendy turned to Dipper and grinned apologetically. “So, ah, Dipper…” she began.

 _Oh God, here it comes_ , Dipper thought miserably, although he kept his expression carefully neutral.

“… would you mind covering for me? Just for five minutes?” Wendy looked over to the edge of the dance floor, where Stan was deep into his which-matchbox-has-the-matches-in-it scam with some hapless drunk. She turned back to him and shrugged awkwardly. “I promise I won’t leave you in the lurch for too long,” she added guiltily.

There were a lot of things Dipper wanted to say, but she was asking him, nicely, and smiling at him in that cool, relaxed way that no-one else seemed to manage half as well, and the light from the stage was spilling across her face in a rather entrancing way… Dipper blinked and looked away, desperately hoping that he hadn’t been staring at her for too long. He tried to say something suave but all that came out was a rapid-fire mumble and he quickly trailed off.

She was at least nice enough to pretend he hadn’t just done the verbal equivalent of projectile vomit. “Thanks, Dipper,” she said, and hurried over to the table where her friends sat and greeted her with a loud cheer. Robbie briefly caught Dipper’s gaze as he looked round and the two shared a look of strong loathing.

Wendy’s boots clattered against something hard under the table as she sat down and she glanced underneath it. There, resting up against one of the table legs, was a violin case. “Jesus, Thompson!” she hissed, glaring across at the pudgy young man. “You brought the damn thing here? This is the Mystery Parlour, not the OK Corral!”

‘Thompson’ was not his real name, but the guy carried around his prized Tommy gun with him everywhere in a highly conspicuous violin case and the moniker had quickly stuck. “Aw, he takes it all over the place, don’t you Thompson?” Lee said jovially, digging a friendly elbow into Thompson’s ribs. “I remember one time I met him down at the local grocer’s over on 10th street and he’d brought it with him there too! What, were you expecting a loaf of bread to give you trouble?” Thompson blushed and muttered something about ‘can’t ever be too careful’, but the rest of them just laughed.

Wendy had promised Dipper she’d only be gone five minutes but she ended up sat with her friends for half an hour, the empty bottles and glasses piling up around them. “So anyway,” Nate slurred at last, “we were all thinking of heading over to the Scuttlebutt when we finish up here. You in?” he asked Wendy, or at least one of the two Wendys that he now saw.

Say what you will about the speakeasies of Gravity Falls, but they didn’t lack for imaginative names, Wendy thought dimly through the small fug of alcohol clouding her brain. She took the cigarette out of her mouth, looked at it in confusion as she suddenly realised she didn’t remember ever lighting it, shrugged and carried on. “Scuttlebutt?” she scoffed. “You guys off your nuts? That’s Cipher Gang territory! You seen the stuff they serve there? _C’est des conneries!_ ” Growing up next to the Canadian border had left her with a repertoire of French curses that she sometimes broke out when drunk or exasperated. “It’s the worst rotgut in New York,” she protested. “I swear Cipher just likes to see his customers go blind! Besides, my shift doesn’t end until… um…” She cast around for a watch or clock. “…soon?” she finished a little lamely.

“Fine,” Robbie huffed. “We’ll stay here ‘til it does. In the meantime, I could use another drink.”

As if on cue, Dipper suddenly appeared by his elbow, a tray of drinks in his hands. “Hi guys!” he said with slightly forced cheer that they were too drunk to pick up on. “Another round, on the house!”

“Dr Funtimes!” Nate roared with glee, his nickname for anyone who bought him a drink. There were murmurs of agreement, even from Tambry, who had not looked up from her cheap pulp novel all evening.

“Well, that was… unexpected,” Wendy said as Dipper just smiled at them all and disappeared back towards the bar. She took a final drag on her cigarette and stubbed it out on the floor. “What’s his game?”

“Maybe the little pipsqueak’s learned his place,” Robbie muttered as he downed half of his rye in one go. If he noticed it had a rather funny flavour, he didn’t comment. “What?” he added, as Wendy fixed him with a glare that could have buckled steel.

On the far side of the Mystery Parlour Stan was just wrapping up his third scam of the evening – and three was his limit, any more and word would get around – when Dipper tugged at his elbow and dragged him away from his mark, a man who honestly believed he had just purchased the Brooklyn Bridge for fifty dollars but was so drunk he hopefully wouldn’t remember that in the morning.

“What is it, kid?” Stan asked, pocketing his fifty dollars.

“Grunkle Stan…” Dipper paused, searching for the right way to phrase his question. “You know that bottle in the medicine cupboard in the bathroom? The brown one? With the label that just says ‘Grunkle Stan’s Private Medicine’ on it?”

“The one with the skull and crossbones on it? The one I told you and Mabel never to drink from?”

“That’s the one. It… it is just moonshine in there, isn’t it?”

Stan blinked in surprise, then doubled over in a loud guffaw. “Alright, Dipper, I’ll come clean,” he chuckled. “It’s moonshine, yes. Hey, can’t an old man have his little pick-me-up every now and then?”

He grinned, but inwardly Dipper slumped in relief. With a bit of luck Robbie would get very, very drunk tonight and make a complete fool of himself. In hindsight, he really should have checked what was in the bottle _before_ he slipped half of it into Robbie’s drink, but he’d been furious with the guy and it was all fine in the end…

“And laxative,” Stan added as an afterthought.

Dipper’s smile died faster than a drunk in the Hudson River. “Wait, _what?_ ” he gasped.

“Laxative, kid. For… well, you know. I’m getting old, Dipper. Sometimes things don’t work like they should any more.” Stan shrugged, then winked at his great-nephew. “Stuff puts prune juice to shame. So don’t you or Mabel go drinking any of it!”

Dipper gulped. Stan’s mind was still sharp, even if other parts of him weren’t, and he noticed. “Why are you asking?” he demanded, with deep and sudden suspicion. Dipper cringed.

From behind him, cutting through the slowly fading chatter of the late-night revellers, came a sudden wail of anguish. Following hot on its heels were several other cries of shock and disgust.

 _Oh, Hell,_ he thought dismally, not even looking round as a set of footsteps dashed out of the Mystery Parlour at high speed. _This is going to take some explaining._

 

* * *

 

_Robbie Valentino and I never got on, although it was not for want of trying on my part. Time and time again since I would try to overcome whatever bad blood existed between us, in his head at least. I was never once anything other than unfailingly polite to the man, and yet he took every opportunity to demean and belittle me! Events did conspire to force us into an uneasy truce after a while, but it was still clear that he held me in unaccountably low regard. The reason for this I have no clue – perhaps there is truth in my late mother’s saying: “some folk are just born bad.”  
_

_Excerpt from_ Chasing Ghosts _, the autobiography of Dipper Pines (unpublished manuscript)_

Broseph, you stinking liar!! Remember the time you almost poisoned him!?

Also, since when are you writing an autobiography, you massive nerd??

\- The Majestic Mabel Pines

 

_THAT NEVER HAPPENED_

_Note to self: hide this manuscript better next time_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A light-hearted introduction before we get down to mob shootouts and Lovecraftian monsters. I hope you liked it!  
> Any kudos/comments/feedback will of course be greatly appreciated.  
> (By the way, if people need a glossary of the 20s slang used, let me know and I’ll edit one into these notes)


End file.
